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吉林大学远程教育学院

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Should We Allow Curiosity to Kill the Cat

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     As we can see , scientific experiments and animal protection can conflict with each other. We seem to hate no other choice but to sacrifice one for the other. But which is a more sensible choice --- to hold back our curiosity for the sake of animal protection or to kill animals for the benefit of science? Here Phil Gates argues for a way out of this dilemma (困境) .

     What would you say to your children if you caught them cutting pieces off butterflies' wings to see how it affected their ability to fly? Killing insect pests is fair enough, but most of us would feel unhappy about our children mutilating animals for curiosity's sake.

     What, then, would you say if you discovered that scientists were doing the same thing --- not in the interests of medical or agricultural research , but to satisfy their curiosity? They do and I believe it's time society began to ask if we can justify it.

     I recently came across some research that investigated the way penguins moved. Those of you who watched TV wildlife documentaries will know that penguins waddle when snow is hard and toboggan on their bellies when it's soft. The scientists wanted to know what made the penguins choose between the two alternatives.

     First they dragged an anaesthetised penguin behind a spring balance to measure how much flipper power it would need to toboggan through the snow. Then they calculated how far its feet sank in soft snow so they could compare the energy expended while sliding with the effort needed to walk.

     The final question concerned the tradeoff between wear and tear on feathers and the benefits of tobogganing. The only way to do this was to kill the penguin and store it in the snow between periods of dragging its corpse behind the spring balance.

     The conclusions the scientists drew from their research were very similar to those that the average TV viewer might have drawn --- depending on snow conditions, penguins choose the method of movement that uses least energy, but tobogganing wears out their feathers, so they need to care for their feathers more often.

     I have no doubt that the scientists went through a great deal of soul-searching before they killed the penguin. Their work provided hard scientific proof for hypotheses about the way these flightless birds move in the Antarctic environment. It was good science, conducted on our behalf in the best traditions of the discipline for a sound motive---the advancement of human knowledge---but it makes me feel uneasy.